Captain Clement Lempriere (1683-1746) was a military engineer, draughtsman, cartographer and engraver, whose most important work was the draughtsmanship for Henry Popple’s majestic map of the British Colonies of North America, published in 1733. He served with the British Army, attached to the Corps of Engineers, and in 1741 was appointed Chief Draughtsman at the Ordnance Office.

A version of this map, with sundry additions including the views of Mahon and St Philip’s Castle, was separately published by Lempriere in 1746. It was then reissued by John Rocque in 1753. This version retains the map of Minorca and the two views, which are here placed together in the lower left corner instead of one on each side. A plan of St Philip’s Castle has been added at the upper left corner. A similar plan appears on John Lodge’s ‘Correct Map of the Island of Minorca’, published by John Bew in 1781.

Minorca shuttled between the possession of various European powers over the eighteenth century: Britain invaded in 1708 and held it until losing it to the French in 1756 in the Seven Years’ War during the siege of Fort Philip, regaining it in the Treaty of Utrecht. They were then driven out in 1782 in the American War of Independence after another long siege. It is possible, given the focus on St Philip’s Castle, which guards the entrance to Mahon, that this map was issued as a result of contemporary interest in Minorca’s position during the Seven Years’ War.